Diagrams and schemas included in medieval medical manuscripts are understudied within art historical scholarship. This thesis discusses the multivalence of meanings — medical, social and theological — generated within schemas included in sixteen different medical codices, produced in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Through text-image analysis, by considering the diagrams in relationship to the texts that immediately surround them and the other texts included within the same codex, the following chapters show that diagrams, through different means, emphasised or legitimized the surrounding texts and medical practices. Additional analysis is interpictorial: the visual motifs are considered in relationship to similar and related pictorial subjects, familiar from other manuscripts and artistic contexts. Through consideration of the intervisual references to devotional art and other scientific schemas, the multiple meanings of the medical diagrams are further elucidated. Another feature of the codices that is studied is their status as physical objects, how they were held, used, leafed through and transported. Lastly, by situating the codices and their diagrams within a late medieval English social, ideological and religious milieu, a deeper understanding of their function is achieved. This thesis shows that rather than being simple tools used in medical practice or representations of medical theories, diagrams included in medical manuscripts functioned in multiple, prescriptive and descriptive, ways to define theological, civic and gendered ideas around social order.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:656241 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Öberg Strådal, Sara |
| Publisher | University of Glasgow |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6484/ |
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